This TED Talk features transport entrepreneur Joel Jackson, recorded live at TED Global 2017.

Imagine if your daily commute involve tens of kilometers on these kinds of roads. Driving this kind of vehicle without any nearby service stations or breakdown assistance. For millions of drivers in many parts of Africa, this is the norm.

Since over 90% of passenger cars are imported, often used,

they're just not designed for local usage.

High import duties often compound the problem,

sometimes doubling the price of a car.

So most vehicles are either too expensive

or too unreliable for the average consumer. Well-designed vehicles are only part of the transport

challenge, though. For every 100 adults in Africa, less than five people actually own a vehicle.

Public transport is available, and in countries like Kenya, it's often run by local entrepreneurs using minivans like this,

but in most rural and peri-urban areas,

it's fragmented and unreliable.

In more remote areas, without transport, people have to walk,

typically tens of kilometers to get to school

or collect clean drinking water or buy supplies from nearby

markets. Bad roads, disparate communities, low average income levels and inadequate vehicles

all impair the transport system and ultimately constrain economic output. Despite this

constraint, the Pan-African economy is booming. Combined GDP is already over

$2 trillion. This is a massive commercial and social opportunity, not a helpless continent.

So why isn't there already something better? Around the world, automotive is core to the manufacturing

sector, but in Africa, it's generally been overlooked by car makers

who have focused on larger established markets

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